Archive for Emptywheel

Obama has used the word "torture" before to describe the harsh interrogation tactics used at CIA-run secret prisons during the Bush administration. But his words at a White House news conference were notably more direct than previous statements.

The comments reflect the line the president is preparing to walk as he gets ready for the release of a Senate committee report on the Bush-era rendition, detention and interrogation program.

According to the president, torture is not OK - but lying about torture is acceptable, as long as you apologize for it. Why do I feel like he learned this strategy by parenting pre-schoolers?

Amidst calls for Brennan’s firing, Obama basically responded, “Sure, we tortured some folks, but I still have confidence in the guy who found the waterboard and black sites at which to torture.”

But I’m not sure why folks are so surprised by Obama’s reluctance to criticize Brennan for lying about hacking the SSCI. Aside from the mutual complicity — Brennan was personal witness to each and every drone strike Obama approved that violated international law, after all — CIA Directors don’t get fired for lying.

They get fired for fucking their biographer.

In the first hour of the show, Howie Kleinwas on for our weekly "Steve Israel Hour." We touched on the torture and lies problem, and both admitted to having the same scary thought: that once a president is sworn in and sits at the Oval Office desk for the first time to read the letter left by his or her predecessor, they find out just how limited their power really is, and that the CIA and NSA are the ones calling the shots.

We also talked about some important Senate races (Tom Udall who was the first to call for Brennan's ouster after his "apology" and is facing a very tough re-election. Plus Shenna Bellows, Jeff Merkely, Brian Schatz and a few others.) Blue America has a Senate page for donations here.

And we called out another World's Biggest Asshole today, Iowa Congressman Steve King who we remember as the one who claimed that for every valedictorian among the Dreamers, there are 100 who have calves the size of cantaloupes from smuggling marijuana across the border. Yeah, that guy. He's back...

During a conference call last month with the National Emergency Coalition, Rep. Steve King said that the U.S. needs to crack down on immigration because our nation’s borders were established by God. Disrespecting the borders, the congressman suggested, is disrespecting God’s will.

He also blamed the child migrant crisis not on drug-war-related violence in Central America but on President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, or as he calls it, “deferred action for criminal aliens.”

Was this group of citizens (that included my friend and radio host Nicole Sandler and Marcy Wheeler aka Emptywheel) not rich enough for access to the People's House? Or is GOP Rep. Dave Camp's office that worried about how they'd come off?

A group of citizens attempt to speak with Congressman Dave Camp or his legislative director to ask for Jobs, not Cuts. The legislative director lied to us, saying that the Congressman and his legislative director were at the Capitol.

From time to time, we here at TPC like to post different points of view, ones that we may or may not agree with. This is one of those times. Consider it food for thought, or a springboard for discussion.

The Deepwater Horizon is not the only well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico for the last month.

A nearby drilling rig, the Ocean Saratoga, has been leaking since at least April 30, according to a federal document.

While the leak is decidedly smaller than the Deepwater Horizon spill, a 10-mile-long slick emanating from the Ocean Saratoga is visible from space in multiple images gathered by Skytruth.org, which monitors environmental problems using satellites.

At least one expert, Ira Leifer, who is part of a government team charged with estimating the flow rate, is convinced that the operation has made the leak worse, perhaps far worse than the 20 percent increase that government officials warned might occur when the riser was cut.

Dr. Leifer said in an interview on Monday that judging from the video, cutting the pipe might have led to a several-fold increase in the flow rate from the well.

AltaKocker:

Dr. Leifer is correct, the "remedy" has increased the amount of oil being released by orders of magnitude. That's why they can recover so much oil.

They were hoping to use the PR of recovering oil as a shield [...] but instead BP and the government has created a bigger mess. And BP will say that they don't have to pay because they only did what the government told them. This major pollution increase falls squarely on the back of BP and POTUS! So when POTUS asks "whose ass to kick," the answer is, perhaps, his own.

The trained sniffers will be deployed where needed, when suspicions are raised about seafood being illegally culled from closed waters, or even to test fish from open waters. No agency has yet reported finding or stopping any tainted seafood from getting to market.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has also been sampling seafood both in closed and open waters, and sending it off for chemical testing, with more than 600 fish and shrimp processed to date.

State and local inspectors are fanning out across the region to docks, seafood processors and restaurants, some now armed with specially trained noses. [...]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also has a role with its own inspectors, though the agency said it only has "several seafood specialists" currently in the Gulf area.

AltaKocker:

A friend of mine, who owns a restaurant, will NOT purchase seafood that might be from the Gulf, because there is NO reliable Government seafood inspection program to assure safety.

Oil and gas are leaking from the seabed surrounding the BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida told Andrea Mitchell today on MSNBC. Nelson, one of the most informed and diligent Congressmen on the BP gulf oil spill issue, has received reports of leaks in the well, located in the Mississippi Canyon sector. This is potentially huge and devastating news. [...]

Marcy Wheeler (Emptywheel) had a lot to say. Please go read her comments. She ended with this:

[I]f Senator Nelson is correct about the breach of fundamental well integrity, the game is close to over for the Gulf of Mexico. We shall see where this goes from Nelson’s initial comment. But make no mistake, Nelson is a careful guy not prone to overt hyperbole, and he clearly understood the ramifications of what he was saying.

It also means, of course, that BP and the Obama Administrations continue to give the American public short shrift in the truth and honesty departments. How surprising.

AltaKocker:

If Sen. Nelson is correct, this BP mess could get a lot uglier for years to come.

As a White House adviser in 1997, Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama's new Supreme Court nominee, urged then-President Bill Clinton to support a ban on late-term abortions. [...]

Kagan [encouraged] Clinton to support a compromise bill that would have banned all abortions of viable fetuses except when the health of the mother was at risk.

The compromise failed. Just one more piece of information to consider.

This should come out in the confirmation hearings. Let's hope they are informative and not just a waste of air time and yet another excuse to be combative and preachy. Political grandstanding is so last hearing ago.

No, I'm not that naive. Just expressing my frustration and being a little hopeful. The moment is over now.